Ice Age Cancelled: Deniers Destined for Disappointment

Ice Age Cancelled: Deniers Destined for Disappointment

The web is alive with idiotic commentary this week after the American Astronomical Society’s solar physics division heard three new studies, all pointing towards declining sunspot activity into the next decade.

But while the least professional journals (see the Financial Post link above) presented only the possibility that reduced solar energy could chill the planet, even sometimes-skeptical newspapers such as The Telegraph responded to the responsibility to include some scientific response confirming that a Grand Solar Minimum, even if one occurred, would not be sufficient to offset the effects and dangers of human-induced global warming.

just enjoy trying to ferret out some small bit of logic or sense from Religious zealots.

Every once in a while one of them almost makes some sense.

But mostly we just get the same tired old empty rethoric.

My scientist is bigger than yours.
Some political group posted a political statement
Some ice melted somewhere
Some “Adjusted” graph showed a small upswing.
Some realist drove a non prius car once.
Some loose corrolations about as good as Temps vs Dow Jones….

But never any proof.
never any valid arguments
never any credible evidence

Yes, scientists can be wrong. Lots of scientists can be wrong, and can be wrong for a great deal of time. In my own field, we have seen a paper published whose title starts off “An end to 40 years of mistakes”. However, there are two things you have to understand about those sorts of overhauls.

a) They are always done by serious scientists who know the field inside and out, and are published in the best journals. Not by anonymous types posting on blogs.

b) While the theory may be dumped or replaced, the data gathered in pursuit of it are not. When Darwin destroyed both creationism and eternism, the magnificent work of Paley and all the pre-Darwinians was neatly assimilated and included in the new framework of biology.

So, even _if_ a major overhaul of the field happened, you would not see an end to the assertion that the Earth is getting warmer, because that is what it is doing. Furthermore, are we in any less of a pickle if the Earth is heating up due to natural as opposed to artificial causes?

That is academic though. There is a lot of debate and argument about how exactly it is heating, and how much, and what effects this will have, and what we can and should do about it, and this is all perfectly respectable. There is not, however, any serious argument that the warming is not caused, in the main, by human release of CO2. It would be very hard to see how it could be, since it is undeniable that CO2 traps heat and it is also undeniable that we have been releasing a lot of it.

At last … A relevent question/statement.
“are we in any less of a pickle if the Earth is heating up due to natural as opposed to artificial causes?”

That… is the real question.
And the real issue.

Fact: There was some warming in the 1990s.
Hypothesys: It was caused by man made CO2.

If true, we need to cut CO2 production.
If not true, then all the money and resources that are being wasted on dumb schemes should be redirected to solving real problmes.

Warm spells have come and gone and mankind has always prospered from them.
But currently, the resources being wasted could solve sever real and serious global problems.
Malaria could be wiped out.
Famine, poverty and homelessness could all be ended for less than the projected cost to reduce global temps by 1 degree.

Well now. Another relevent question.
What happened…. two relevent thoughts from AGW cultist in one day…

OK, the cost figure can be looked up in lots of places.
Pick one, any one, they are all astonomical.
The lowest one I have seen published by (Believers BTW) was 45 Trillion Dollars.
But you can pick whatever number you want.

No matter how you slice it, it is a staggering waste of resource for an effect that nobody will ever notice.

Scam?????

It is a scam bacause the power in charge are fully aware of the futility of the whole thing but stand to gain enormous power and personal wealth from spinn off results.

Sorry, how do you know they know it’s futile? After all, NOTONE of the hundreds of thousands of emails over, what, 7 years? longer?, extracted by theft from the CRU has produced anything saying even obliquely “Mitigation of AGW is futile”.

So maybe you have other evidence?

Where is it?

Or are you Mystic Meg, able to read minds and all that stuff? You know, like that crippled guy on the documentary I saw at the Cinema. Charles something. Xavier. That was it. Are you a mind reader like Charles Xavier?

The IPCC concluded in its Fourth Assessment Report that nearly 90 percent of the 29,000 observational data series examined revealed changes consistent with the expected response to global warming, and the observed physical and biological responses have been greatest in the regions that warmed the most.

“Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.”

Yes yes. Of course we have all see this many times.
That is the reason that the infamouse Sensitivity figure is so contovertial.ITIS in fact the reason that a doubling of CO2 is only capable of inducing 1 degree of additional warming if all else remains equal.
Of course, all else never remains equal so in fact it is an interesting figure but hardly telling in any definitive way.
The climate system is of cours not nearly that simple.
All it takes is a persentage point more cloud and that theory becomes toast.

So in the final analysis, Actual climate will tell the story.
As we receed into the cooling for the next decades, the real drivers will become obvious.

Please point us to your wondrous credible sources then anonymous. At least skeptical science & real climate are run by scientists. Pretty much all the peer reviewed journals are against you, so please amuse us as to your sources of credibility.

Phil.. To honest, I cant think of any website anywhere that I could honestly call an unbiased reliable source.
Realclimate, skepticalScience and indeed this blog are clearly propaganda outlets for the AGW industry.
And of course Any source I would mention, no matter how good would simply be smeared by you guys so that is pointless.

What I do is review links I find, Follow them to their original sources and evaluate the content on its own merits.

The mistake most cult members make is to assume that their sources are alwasy accruate because it always agrees with their political alignment.

Its like Catholics always assuming that statements made by the Vatican are always correct.

“Phil.. To honest, I cant think of any website anywhere that I could honestly call an unbiased reliable source.”

Great! So if we look at the science alone without the interference of blogs, ideology or politics, we can see that undoubtedly the bulk of climate scientists agree with the AGW position & not a single major scientific institution disagrees with it.

So the question begs. Why your opposition? Denier blogs just do it for you? Or your political party doesn’t support it, so you follow suite & feel the need to defend that position?

“And of course Any source I would mention, no matter how good would simply be smeared by you guys so that is pointless.”

It’s ok, I can fill in the blanks for you. WTFUWT.

“The mistake most cult members make is to assume that their sources are alwasy accruate because it always agrees with their political alignment.”

We ALL know that those statements are pure politics Phil.
Hell, the organisation I work for has such a statement as well.
they have no idea what it means or what the science is but since it is politically correct to make such a statement, we have one.

It means exactly nothing.
It is no more relevent than the mythical concensus.
We all know that was a fraud as well.

And posting a link to a paper will of course only result in you posting some supposed “debunking”.
Then I f I had the time I would post a debunk to your debunk and so on and so on.

I prefer to suggest that people simply go look up the facts and make up their own minds.

Its all easy to find and shows well enough how the AGW Hypothesis is weak.

And just for the fun of it:
Google this:
Solar Physicist Dr. C. de Jager predicts Grand Solar Minimum will last until 2100

It’s all about the sun. And since the sun matters and the atmosphere does not, today is the hottest day of the year. Everyones know that today the longest day of the year, and the sun will be at the highest point in its ever-higher arcs in the sky. Therefore today is the hottest day, just as June 21 is the hottest day every summer. You can count on it, because for 32 years, I was a Professor of Solarology, and I’m always right, and I never lie.

When you say 3500 “scientists” you mean 3500 people with largely untested and unexamined opinions, most of whom have some credentials in other areas. I don’t care what a dentist thinks about spaceflight propulsion systems, what a lawyer thinks about biological evolution, what an coalmining engineer thinks about climate change, or what a retired geographer thinks about topics in earth science or physics for which he never even took a class, let alone did actual measurements and tests. Many of them make TV weather forecasters look highly qualified in atmospheric physics, by comparison.

And 3500 is not a large number of people to be “wrong”. Way more than that believe that the seasons are caused by earth’s distance from the sun, or that dinosaurs were contemporaneous with people. At least 3500 don’t know what contemporaneous means. At least that many think the moon landing was in a swimming pool, and more than half of Canadians in the Macleans magazine survey believe in angels, and even more Americans. Oh, sorry, some of you might be in that group. Maybe the angels can swoop in and fix things. Let’s keep living like there’s no tomorrow. Good idea.

“Malaria could be wiped out.
Famine, poverty and homelessness could all be ended”…

Ha ha. The same groups who are against intervention in free release of greenhouse gases are dead set against efforts to do such things, unless it might allow them to sell more DDT or pay less in taxes.

“Malaria could be wiped out.
Famine, poverty and homelessness could all be ended”…

Ha ha. The same groups who are against intervention in free release of greenhouse gases are dead set against efforts to do such things, unless it might allow them to sell more DDT or pay less in taxes.

Look anon, you are very much pushing at an open door with me if your stance is that there are things that will reap real and provable benefits today that should be higher on the agenda than you are. As that wonderful old socialist comrade Phillip Stott put it, “There is an environmental problem and that is four billion people in poverty”. I have just had the most tedious exchange with a particularly rancid member of this board who has revealed what underlies the widespread indifference we see towards poor people with dark skins in other countries.

However, you had better get one thing absolutely straight if you want to argue or debate anything on this issue: Scientific fraud is a very serious charge, not one to be thrown around lightly. I will not see honest scientists insulted or defamed in this manner. So strike that out of your vocabulary, got it?

Now, to answer this:

“If true, we need to cut CO2 production.”

No, we need to cut CO2 emission. There is a crucial distinction. Punitive top-down regulation to squelch business and industry are both deeply immoral and - more importantly - they just do not work. They just don’t. That is understood where it counts, and that is why those noted wingnut publications Science and Nature are talking geoengineering and carbon capture technologies.

I have an enormous confidence in the best of my species and its ability to handle any problem through reason and science, technology and industry. That is where the solution to this lies. For example, only last year there was a paper in science about injecting aerosols to cool down the planet somewhat; remarkable stuff. Of course, that needs a lot of testing and work, but so what? Everything does. The year before that there was another good one about Carbon Capture.

So, there are plenty of things we can do. It is true that this water is muddied by a lot of hysterical wannabes jumping up and down in it, but that is not really important, not long term. I like your touch of internationalism and solidarity, but I will not see honest scientists lightly accused of dishonesty. Get that straight and we have a good basis for discussion.

Look anon, you are very much pushing at an open door with me if your stance is that there are things that will reap real and provable benefits today that should be higher on the agenda than you are. As that wonderful old socialist comrade Phillip Stott put it, “There is an environmental problem and that is four billion people in poverty”. I have just had the most tedious exchange with a particularly rancid member of this board who has revealed what underlies the widespread indifference we see towards poor people with dark skins in other countries.

However, you had better get one thing absolutely straight if you want to argue or debate anything on this issue: Scientific fraud is a very serious charge, not one to be thrown around lightly. I will not see honest scientists insulted or defamed in this manner. So strike that out of your vocabulary, got it?

Now, to answer this:

“If true, we need to cut CO2 production.”

No, we need to cut CO2 emission. There is a crucial distinction. Punitive top-down regulation to squelch business and industry are both deeply immoral and - more importantly - they just do not work. They just don’t. That is understood where it counts, and that is why those noted wingnut publications Science and Nature are talking geoengineering and carbon capture technologies.

I have an enormous confidence in the best of my species and its ability to handle any problem through reason and science, technology and industry. That is where the solution to this lies. For example, only last year there was a paper in science about injecting aerosols to cool down the planet somewhat; remarkable stuff. Of course, that needs a lot of testing and work, but so what? Everything does. The year before that there was another good one about Carbon Capture.

So, there are plenty of things we can do. It is true that this water is muddied by a lot of hysterical wannabes jumping up and down in it, but that is not really important, not long term. I like your touch of internationalism and solidarity, but I will not see honest scientists lightly accused of dishonesty. Get that straight and we have a good basis for discussion.

“The big problem I have is….. All the practical solutions like what you just mentioned are summarily dismissed in favour of Drastic changes to the world order.”

No, it’s because the worlds best scientific & economic minds put their heads together & that is the best solution they came up with at the time that would not further damage the planet.

”
Why?
Because the real goal is not to fix anything, it is to use the “crisis” to redistribute wealth, redefine global government, impose global socialism and just along the way, make a few powerful people obscenely rich.”

Another paranoid delusional rant. Again with the socialism. You guys can never explain to me why the conservative parties of NZ, the UK, Germany, France, Denmark etc to name a few have implemented a carbon tax of some sort. Have they all turned socialist too? Funny how both conservative & progressive parties are using the same solution eh?

“I have an enormous confidence in the best of my species and its ability to handle any problem through reason and science, technology and industry. That is where the solution to this lies. ”

The wait until we have a technological solution that will reduce the planets CO2 levels while at the same time not damaging the planet, might never come. That is why we need a solution now in the interim. We KNOW implementing a carbon tax wont damage the planet that we all have to share. We DON’T know what the long term effects will be of our current technological solutions for removing CO2 on a planetary scale, that is why they haven’t been rolled one out as yet.

I’m all for a technological solution too, heck I don’t want a tax for no good reason either. But what if that proven technological solution is 100 years away. Obviously that will be too late with our current & future CO2 output.

Claimed that Mitigation will cost 5% of GDP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review

World GDP, also known as world gross domestic product or GWP - gross world product, calculated on a nominal basis, was estimated at $65.61 trillion in 2007 by the CIA World Factbook.
http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/world-economic-indicators/world-gdp.html

So using those numbers, it will cost 3.25 Trillion Dollars per year to cut C02.
The IPCC estimates, projections or scenarios or what ever they are calling them these days suggest that mitigation will reduct the global averag temps by 1 degree by 2100.

Now Does that Really look like a sensable way to spend money to you?

or you could look it up yourself and tell me what you think the cost will be.
That should prove entertaining.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.